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A strange thought just occured to me. Way back in the early 90s in the amiga times, the magazines used to have demos sometimes on the coverdisks, and there were sometimes reviews of demos inside. There were adverts for pd companies advertising demos too (I wonder if team 17 are still doing that ;) At copy parties people often had some demos too, and I'd say most amiga owners knew at least what demos were back then.

Now, most people have never heard of demos, or at best remember them from amiga days... So it got me thinking, is the scene actually growing with the popularity of computers, or is it staying about the same? Are there more groups now or less? More parties? Sceners?

My guess is this: There are always some kids more geeky and more into computers... I guess this type of kid has typically owned a computer since at least early 90's. And they are the ones typically getting into the scene...

I don't think there are any more of these people appearing now than back then, the pc market has been driven more by people wanting a wordprocessor, internet, or a new toy for their kids. So probably similar numbers of people discovering the scene as back then...

So the main growth of the scene (if there is any) would be from people not leaving the scene, and new generations coming in. What does anyone think?

no, the scene is dying, didn't you know?..

I think it's getting bigger, because honestly, the style and content of demos has evolved into something more eyecatching and accessible than a sprite-multiplexer and a sinescroller ...

I guess 2D artwork, chiptunes and 3k of greetings never really appealed to anyone, except for us freaks.

You need a Popular/VIP2/Porrasturvat type prod that will get gamers interested or Variform/Deepness in the Sky/Incyber to get the alternative "artsy" crowd to catch up ...

I loved the Ars Electronica piece on scene.org, that, to me, would be THE place to convert some nonbelievers.

The number of people in the scene must have been quite low for years compared to the golden days of 1989-1993, when just about everyone with a computer and the ability to swap and write "type menu" into a startup-sequence were sceners. But I too have this feeling that the number is currently rising. At least I've done my part making a "comeback" and tricking a bunch of friends to do the same thing. :)

But in my opinion we don't really need any special kind of "killer app" productions for the "layman". Those who have it in them to get interested in this demo crap will do so anyway.

honestly, i don't care how big the scene is and whether it is growing or not. and i don't want to discuss what a so-called real scener is. on the contrary, i plead for the "right to participate in my hobby the way i like it". for example, on the one hand, i am very interested in gameboy classic coding in asm and gb demos, but on the other hand i like to think about an c++-object-oriented design for a dx 8 engine. newzkool3rz might say that the first is "yesterday", while 8-bit nerds might say that the latter is "senseless api-scripting". i don't care for both of these opinions; i want to practice my hobby the way i like and don't like submitting to dogmatic restrictions. some related topics are discussable though.

let's just make demos and see what happens.

exactly ... we're here to produce instead of deduce ! prod in the works

I don't know about you, but something here is certainly growing!

The scene still has the potential to become much huger than it currently is, mostly because of the dormant state of the scene in the US.

In Europe, the scene is large enough that it is self perpetuating and self catalyzing. By this, I mean that Euros don't have to actively promote the scene or actively tell people about it in order for it to sustain itself. In the US, it is the complete opposite. There is a small core of people who know about the scene, but they are geographically dispersed and there hasn't been a consistent demoparty event to bring them together regularly.

We are working to change this, but it is going to take years, not days.

I think there will always be people who find graphics programming interesting. That's why the scene isn't dying. Nor even changing (much) (of course old sceners retire and newcomers come in, but I don't mean that kind of change).

Programming is a fascinating subject and graphics programming is probably the easiest way to get "something cool done". Coding PDE solvers or financial analyzing using languages like FORTRAN isn't all that cool, because you were rarely get something VISUAL done. People like visuals.

I think the natural consequence of this is that these people with the interest gather up. Some people also do grpahics for the demos, some do the music, and so we have a whole scene of coders, graphicians and musicians.

In the past days, the motivations for coding demos might have been a little different (interest to graphics programming still important). But I think the above fits quite nicely into the scene of this day.

I think the scene is growing...
In 2002 there was ~92 demoparties (ojuice)... I couldnt find any complete list of parties held 93 or so.. but im guesing there where alot less demoparites then... or am i wrong?
I dont know if there are more sceners now though, we might just be more active? ;)
But there are alot of young sceners under the age of 20... Ppl say the scene is dying, its not, its just changeing, evolving, and it has ever since it was born.

Size doesn't matter, it's what you do with it.

sure it's growing, and it's heading towards unforseen heights, both in quantity and in quality. what scares me most is the professionality that had its entrance in the scene during the last, lets say, 4 years. i don't know where it will exactly go to, but i hope that people still have fun doing demos then, instead of just seeing the hard competition. =)

psonice, team17 consisted of scenepeople in the beginning, i think that's because they advertised with demos. =)

The scene is of course much larger. Reaches the mainstream more today (See DOG, Siggraph, sceners working on companies and more) and people can easilly learn about it through the internet. PCs have dominated the world also, more geeks. Except if it's an illusion, because at the older days it was so underground that we wasn't aware of many sceners.

It's an interesting paradox, that yes, a lot of Amiga owners knew what a demo is at the older days. Almost all of my friends who were owning an Amiga for example, have memories of Desert Dreams, State of the Art or Oddysey, which surprises me. And these are not aware about modern demoscene, even in AGA Amiga. One told me he doesn't like modern demos. Also, most of the PC owners (even geeks) doesn't have any idea about demos. Perhaps, owning an Amiga or beeing a geek was very rare too at the older times. Today, everyone can be and they just like to play Counterstrike or believe they are "hackers" :)

But the scene is definitelly much larger and more widespread! At least on the PC it rocks! On the 8bits, 16bits and other weird machines, it's smaller than at the early days for sure.

dalezy: I didn't know they advertised with demos, or can't remember, but I sure do remember ordering demos from them :) And about competition between the groups, perhaps we'll soon see some sceners/groups 'going pro', getting sponsorship from nvidia/ati, and holding 'pro' competitions with media coverage.

Anyway, why the hell was scene so well known back in the early 90's compared to now??? Was it just that only geeks had computers then, and the environment was right for scene popularity, and now the geeks are buried beneath the millions of kids playing quake + people using pcs as typewriters?

yes.

no.

maybe.

perhaps.

Well, I'm new to the scene... The first demo I saw was Stash/TBL in 2001, and I was fascinated.
I remember thinking, 'cool, this will be like one of those little game-promoting movies but without the game' and then I watched it and liked it enough to look for more... and here I am.
So, for me the scene has just begun, although the people I find here seem to feel that this is the tail end of everything.
Maybe it's the lack of standard hardware whose limits you can push...

Ya'll listen to the man speaking!

Yeah! "Senseless api-scripting" is another nice term for what I call "Programming Abstractions" :)

p.s. 8bit will NEVER Die!!!

i'm surprised nobody still makes 8088 code + cga demos now. How come 8bit only rules on commodore/spectrum etc???

Evidently, there are machines that leave fingerprint in the history and others that not.